For the past few years the processes associated with professional recording and editing of multiple takes of classical or other music have been generally the same. In the case of classical recording, the orchestra, the conductor and a professional sound engineer tasked with recording the orchestra typically meet in a location with acoustic properties suitable for recording such an audio work. Each individual/instrument of the orchestra is supplied with a microphone. Normally each microphone records the associated individual/instrument into a separate recording track. During the recording phase, the sound engineer, conductor and orchestra work together to record the work in the best way possible. Typically, musical passages may be played and recorded repeatedly in an effort to capture the best possible recording. Of course, some takes will be better than others, as will some individual recordings. Some recordings may even occasionally contain dialogue between the participants.
At the end of such a recording session, the sound engineer will usually have accumulated recorded content from the numerous individual recordings that is at least two or three times the length of the actual work.
In other instances, a sound engineer may be presented with several complete recordings of the same musical work (e.g., an opera that is recorded on three consecutive days) and be asked to create a composite audio work containing the best portions of each day's recording.
Usually the sound engineer opens the recordings in a stand-alone digital audio workstation, or a host-based digital audio workstation. The audio data is then presented to the user in a graphical user interface with the recording from each microphone being placed in its own track. Thus, there typically will be as many tracks as there are microphones. The recording itself is typically presented at full length in the graphical user interface.
The creation of the final music work out of such a recording is usually a hard and long process. A professional sound engineer typically will spend at least 3 hours doing post processing for each hour of source material. A consideration of the steps involved may make the reason for this clearer.
First, the sound engineer must become familiar with all of the recordings. He or she will listen to each take and compare them with each other to determine which take contains the best quality recording. Second, the take that is determined to be the best is then extracted and copied to the final recording. It may require more than 1000 such “select and extract” operations when, for example, a symphony is being edited. Associated with each select and cut operation is usually a lengthy process of searching through the recorded material, track-by-track, to find the best recording. Moving forward and backward through the different takes, listening to each take and mentally comparing them again and again is a required step in the assembly process. Since the raw material will be three or four times the length of the performance, it should be clear that the process of forming a single recording is difficult and labor intense.
Thus, what is needed is a system and method that assists the user in editing digital audio recordings that have a number of different tracks and takes where a “track” will be understood to represent a recording from a single microphone and a “take” understood to be a collection of multiple microphones that all record the same performance. It would be preferred that such a system and method would provide the user with an increase in efficiency and a corresponding reduction in the time required to edit such a complex digital audio recording.
Heretofore, as is well known in the media editing industry, there has been a need for an invention to address and solve the above-described problems. Accordingly, it should now be recognized, as was recognized by the present inventors, that there exists, and has existed for some time, a very real need for a system and method that would address and solve the above-described problems.
Before proceeding to a description of the present invention, however, it should be noted and remembered that the description of the invention which follows, together with the accompanying drawings, should not be construed as limiting the invention to the examples (or preferred embodiments) shown and described. This is so because those skilled in the art to which the invention pertains will be able to devise other forms of the invention within the ambit of the appended claims.